Step 1: Purchase a plantation in the Spanish province (A traditional harvesting grounds for recruiting of soldiers. Few citizens, mostly considered ‘backwater’ at the time.)
Step 2: Introduce the horse-collar, the plow, ‘terra preta’ (tilling of charcoal), fertilizer (easiest in this case: baked pig manure), insecticide, pennicillin, and wind-mill-powered pumped irrigation. These things together will result in massive harvests at low costs. They will also ensure that my peasants’ children don’t die, and are well-fed. My wealth will after one or two years of this expand massively. The absence of disease will also enable me to convince the local population that I am favored of the gods.
Step 3a: Utilize newfound wealth and the introduction of the pulley, the A-Frame, and the leaf-spring to build a fleet of Conastoga wagons for transport of crops and local goods at faster rates than anyone else could accomplish. Additionally introduce the water screw and associate it with the aeolipile (already-existing but unutilized historically) for water transport. Introduce distilling for alcohol (another trade good) and also for methalization of olive oil for biodiesel for fuel for simple steam-turbine engines (aeolipile --> low-efficiency turbine pretty easily). These will then be the power-train for both Conastogas and for boats, again increasing mobility of my products.
Step 3b. Reinvent the Girandoni air rifle. Work with metalsmiths under my control to do so. These rifles are 20-shot .46-caliber air-powered rifles first used for military applications in the 1780′s. While technically difficult to create, the metalsmiths of Rome could accomplish this. These smiths would be kept under death-watch; 24⁄7 watch of guards dedicated to keeping the secret by killing any smith who was about to be captured or defected. Said smiths will otherwise be granted lives of utter luxury. Equip motorized Conastogas w/ flame throwers. Recruit/conscript local peasantry into service in newly minted mobilized infantry.
Step 3c. Aeolipile/turbine biodiesel engines provide sufficient weight/power ratio for ultralight aircraft. Constructing a small core of these and training young-teen pilots will enable scouting profiles unlike that of any people to have come before. These will not, however, be available until the third or fourth year, as building the frames will require bamboo grown from imported plants. (Some variety of phyllostachys, likely.) Amongst their other purposes, the bamboo shoots will be used to construct lightweight frames for ultralight craft. Coupled with simple radios, these would prove invaluable for distribution and acquisition of information. Between the mobilized infantry and ultralight air superiority, even a small force—say, four groups of ten wagons w/ twenty soldiers each, and five ultralights—would be an equal match to a single Roman legion despite being outnumbered several times over. (less than a thousand men vs. 11,000-16,000 men.) (Logistics are also an issue. But it’s relatively easy to beat that problem just by using blown-glass bottles and corking them while boiling.)
This lets my troops move faster and strike harder than any unit of traditional troops—several times over.
Step 4. Expanding my scope of influence. Establishing myself as a military force to be reckoned with, I will position myself for further trade for economic expansion before initiating aggressive hostilities. ( I want to wait until the Emperor’s people make the first move to ‘suppress’ me so when I come as a conqueror I have a plausible excuse; I was simply ‘defending’ myself against a mad emperor.) In so doing, I will introduce arabic numerals and double-entry book-keeping. This will enable me to engage in fractional-reserve banking and begin moneylending to foreign persons, thereby expanding my own wealth and influence. I will further develop a telegraph system to permit communication amongst disparate parties (and distract from the existence/use of radios, whose crafting will also be another ‘secret of the gods’, similar to the making of the rifles. Unlike the rifles, the radios will be far easier to be stolen. Need to plan ahead for encrypted communications.) Abaci, too, will be introduced for accountants.
At this point it is four to five years into “the plan”. I now own a massive swath of plantations, each of which are producing yields at unheard of rates. I will have introduced greenhouse farming for things like strawberries or rice for sustained harvests as well. My fleets of motorized wagons and steam-boats will be making an expanding circuit of influence. The peasants under my care will be practically immune to disease (vaccination and antibiotics.) -- an intentional campaign of propaganda (this will require introduction of the printing press and advances in grammar such as punctuation and word spacing [ !! ], as well as use of radios w/ loudspeakers for ‘town-square addresses’. ) will ensure that the people are suitably convinced that this is because I am the favored son of Vulcan, god of the forge. My troops will be invincible, and terrifying. (Ultralights could also be used to deliver non-inconsequential quantities of ‘greek fire’ (gelatinized biodiesel in this case) to ensure that enemy fortifications are essentially indefensible. This will spread fear and further reinforce the Vulcan-myth; I harness fire to move vehicles through the very air itself, and rain fire down from above.)
Years six through ten depend on unforseen variables for whether there will be protracted suppression of luddites and conservatives, or if my reputation precedes me sufficiently that Rome begs me to induct her into my Constitutional Republic of Aligned City-States.
Years 6+ will also involve the introduction of schools for training the children of regions in my control in basic rationality arts; skepticism, falsificationism, logic, mathematics, etc., etc.. They will also introduce further socioeconomic and technical advances that require a more advanced base than 0-year Rome possessed. These include factories, vacuum tubes (and through them early-tech varieties of computers), birth control and other forms of concerns for quality-of-life, and various forms of chemistry and so on.
Here’s why nowhere above did I mention gunpowder: it’s too easily stolen a technological advantage, and explosives in combat are too effective at reducing the advantage of disparity in technological gaps. One guy on horseback w/ a tube-launched gunpowder rocket could maul a Conastoga wagon; one hundred men with such weapons would eliminate the combat-efficacy of my above mobilized infantry. Mortars would be even worse. The same goes for the ultralights; they are defenseless against massed gunfire, AA weapons like rockets, and the like.
However—knowing this myself, I can keep that in reserve for the second-generation of technological-advantage combat revolution. Motorized bicycles or bronze-plated half-tread conastogas require more technical prowess initially but make for just as effective a force, especially if they too are using light cannon, rockets/mortars, and the like. Ultralights equipped with unguided mass-fire rockets are less valuable but after 6-10 years would be more expendable. And their value can be expanded through use of dirigibles as carriers. (Extended range plus heavier craft w/ more-powerful motors.)
Through a careful management of new agricultural, medical, economic, industrial, and military technologies as above, conquering Rome would be easily achievable within 5-10 years at the absolute most.
If one wishes to gamble more, one year would be the minimum necessary to assemble an elite corps of four hundred Girardoni air-rifle troops (coil-spring-driven boltguns would make clumsy but effective pistols for close-range combat in a pinch) riding motorized Conastogas equipped w/ flamethrowers, assuming we acted piratically, canniballizing a few small towns in the countryside to sustain ourselves through the build-up period. These would then be used to launch a Hannibal-esque strike upon Rome itself, designed to assassinate the Emperor and place myself upon the throne.
EDIT: I just realized that it’s possible to hand-solder transistors from raw materials (As well as capacitors and other similar parts). This means that it is possible to create electronic components using Roman-era tools to build the tools necessary to assemble said electronics. While they wouldn’t be up to snuff for modern designs, they would certainly be sufficient for crude robotics. Including ‘rapid’ prototypers. I was already failing to fully utilize my time during the aggri-business expansion (year 1) -- this would adjust for that. I could build machines to handle much of the industrial bootstrap up. (Gun manufacture in particular.) I wouldn’t even need blacksmiths for the guns or turbine-engines. Sintering, casting, and assembler-bots would be capable of producing the equipment as needed. (As was also noted to me by another person; clockwork automata can achieve complex if stereotyped patterns of behavior up to and including fine manual dexterity actions like uncorking and pouring bottles of wine. The industrial applications of this are immense. I wouldn’t even need gunsmiths or engine-smiths; I could instead automate the nearly entire process.)
Upvoted for detail and thoroughness, but I think you’re depending too much on the naivete of the natives. Step 3b is especially problematic; even if your guards are too loyal to sell you out (why?), you can’t conceal that you’re doing something in secret with a pack of metalsmiths. Just the fact that it’s a secret will be enough to get the provincial governor’s attention. That’s probably not the end: he may well be an incompetent ditherer, or venal enough to take bribes. But as soon as you start training your infantry, the clock starts: the emperor sends an envoy ordering you to turn over your new weapons, you refuse, you’re ordered to appear before a Roman court, you refuse, you’re declared to be in rebellion, and it’s on.
I think your one-year gamble is probably the better strategy for becoming emperor—maybe the best one, or close to it. Certainly the fastest. Surviving the next year would be tricky, though.
Step 3b is especially problematic; even if your guards are too loyal to sell you out (why?), you can’t conceal that you’re doing something in secret with a pack of metalsmiths.
I’m only concerned about the technological prowess, not knowledge of its existence. I want to maintain my technological advantage. The guards can’t convey information they themselves lack; and I’d make sure the job was lucrative enough.
But as soon as you start training your infantry, the clock starts: the emperor sends an envoy ordering you to turn over your new weapons, you refuse, you’re ordered to appear before a Roman court, you refuse, you’re declared to be in rebellion, and it’s on.
Well—plantation owners were allowed to maintain their own household troops (within reason) -- and I’d have fewer than a thousand such. It’d be pretty easy to hide the total number of individuals involved; especially since the efficacy of my troops would be totally inconceivable. Careful bribery of provincial leaders and arguments/justifications involving guarding my own wagons, keeping troops always on the move to make them less apparent.
Also—I’m expecting to face charges of rebellion; they are an integral part of the plan. It would be best if they didn’t come until somewhere between three and four years in. It’s important to recognize that the usual response to ‘wild’ stories of ‘incredible’ weapons is skepticism. There’s very strong odds that the initial inquiries/investigations would simply not recognize the scale/scope of the threat involved. But you are quite right; additional maskirovka should probably be involved to ensure that the total number of troops being trained is vastly under-reported. The usefulness of the weapons should also be down-played. It would be very easy (use clay bullets, undercharge the guns) to make it appear that they are only useful against poorly-armored highway robbers. That would stave off ‘official’ inquiries quite well.
Surviving the next year would be tricky, though.
The Romans as a culture placed a lot of stock in the notion that victory in combat represented worthiness as a person. You can coast pretty far on such a victory. Capitalizing on it would be tricky—how does one guarantee the loyalty of a personal elite guard?
Yeah, ok; you have more scope for camouflage than I appreciated at first. It will eventually become obvious that you’re training an army (you’ll have to train them to fight in formation, and volley, and things like that), but when the provincial governor shows up wanting to know what you plan to do with it, you might well be able to get away with saying “I’m planning to conquer Rome and install myself as emperor, and if you go along with it I’ll find you a nice fat province in the East to be governor of”. And if that doesn’t work, well, you probably can win a long campaign, it’s just really messy.
The Romans as a culture placed a lot of stock in the notion that victory in combat represented worthiness as a person.
Indeed, but that doesn’t mean they’ll stop fighting you. Consider Cannae: most states would have sued for peace after so brutal an upset. Same deal after Arausio; the Romans were as proud and stiff-necked a people as have ever existed, China and America by no means excepted.
(you’ll have to train them to fight in formation, and volley, and things like that),
I’m planning on 20-man units, using modern infantry tactics (not much in the way of volleyed fire, nor pretty much anything in the way of formation firing). Also, air guns are quiet. So these aren’t really much of an issue.
I really like your plan from the technological point of view, but I think that it has some flaws in the sociopolitical department.
Right off the bat, you propose buying a plantation, but those things are pretty expensive. Where will you get the money ?
The core of your plan is to develop, and maintain a monopoly on, technological superiority: in agriculture, construction, and warfare. Unfortunately, your technological advances must be incremental, by necessity—you can’t go from zero to digital computers, nor are you trying to do so. But this means that your technologies will be comprehensible to a well-educated Roman. This practically ensures that your competitive advantage will be stolen by your rivals very quickly. You avoid gunpowder for this very reason, but is it really that much harder to steal pulleys ?
You attempt to get around this with your death-watch guards, but who death-watches the death-watchers ? If I told one of your guards, “nine out of ten gods agree, you should allow me to sneak in one of my smiths to talk to one of your smiths, and BTW here’s a purse containing MXXIV gold pieces with your name on it”, what motivates the guard to refuse ? And what about all of your agricultural innovations—will you watch every peasant ?
In addition, your timetable is too aggressive. You’re proposing to move from horse-plows to powered flight in less than five years. But building an ultralight aircraft, or a fuel refinery, or even a Conastoga wagon, is a lot harder in reality than it looks on paper. Mere abstract knowledge is not enough; you also need raw resources, experience, and training. Merely training your smiths (who, according to the scenario’s setup, lack your intelligence as well as your education) might take a couple years in and of itself.
I believe you also underestimate the social inertia involved. We have trouble with “skepticism, falsificationism, logic, mathematics” and birth control even today; what makes you think that you’ll be any more successful in these endeavours in the pre-Enlightenment Rome ? That “I am the chosen of Vulcan” gambit can only get you so far, and might in fact backfire, because priests tend to take exception to their power structures being disrupted.
Right off the bat, you propose buying a plantation, but those things are pretty expensive. Where will you get the money ?
We were granted “enough money to live as a patrician for a year”. I made an assumption about what that meant, since in those days all wealth beyond jewelry was in the form of real property (land) anyhow. Agriculturally Spain was traditionally relatively crappy. Land would be cheap and plentiful because it wouldn’t be seen as a viable resource for crop harvesting. (I’d only be able to pull it off because of modern agricultural knowledge.)
You attempt to get around this with your death-watch guards, but who death-watches the death-watchers ? If I told one of your guards, “nine out of ten gods agree, you should allow me to sneak in one of my smiths to talk to one of your smiths, and BTW here’s a purse containing MXXIV gold pieces with your name on it”, what motivates the guard to refuse ?
Nothing. Well, except that I’d be rotating the guards and so on. Plus; nobody would want what they were selling, at least for the first few years. And by then it really wouldn’t much matter—I’d already have the ramp-up I needed to maintain first-mover advantage. If “the secret” got out… they’d get girardoni air rifles. I would then simply move on to bootstrapping again w/ explosive weapons and revise the tactical rulebook on the generals of the day all over again.
It takes, remember, FAR longer to retrain already-trained soldiers to use new tactics, and they tend to be socially conservative about even wanting to do so. Two total revolutions of military tactics in a ten year window? It would take an genius just to stay competent. (And such rare individuals are very susceptible to assassination. A problem I would also face.)
This practically ensures that your competitive advantage will be stolen by your rivals very quickly. You avoid gunpowder for this very reason, but is it really that much harder to steal pulleys ?
Individually I fully-well expect a number of the techs to be stolen relatively early on. I’m alright with that, actually. A first-mover advantage traditionally lasts about five years. That’s also one additional reason why I’d chosen a “backwater” or “rural” area to bootstrap in: there will be far fewer ‘educated’ men to deal with, and I will be able to ramp up—initially—in relative isolation. So while I’m bootstrapping up; they must A) discover my bootstrapping, B) uncover the methods used, C) adopt them for themselves. Each of these individually takes time.
Horse collars, pulleys, and a-frames are all individually relatively low-hanging fruit. The leaf-springs necessary for conastoga wagons are far less so. The technical know-how to construct a working turbine engine to proper tolerances is even moreso.
Merely training your smiths (who, according to the scenario’s setup, lack your intelligence as well as your education) might take a couple years in and of itself.
A few months per project at most. Task specialization would be used. As would cast-forging and other modern industrial techniques. Metal lathes, apprentices, and so on. Figure also that I’d only have to train three or four such people, over the course of a few months (to each specific project) -- and they in turn could also retrain others. Use of casting would also increase their productivity. I wouldn’t need very much.
As to the raw resources; that’s why I focused so much on trade.
I believe you also underestimate the social inertia involved.
I was counting on it being extreme. Otherwise, my technological advantage would be far, FAR harder to maintain. The schools—the part where I mentioned ‘”skepticism, falsificationism, logic, mathematics” and birth control’—are not vital or even very contributive to the plan as described.
what makes you think that you’ll be any more successful in these endeavors in the pre-Enlightenment Rome ?
Nothing, really. But at least the civilization would have an 1800 year jump-start on making it work out. (Plus, we got many of those ideas from classical—traditional grecoroman—thought anyhow.)
That “I am the chosen of Vulcan” gambit can only get you so far, and might in fact backfire, because priests tend to take exception to their power structures being disrupted.
Cults and mystery cults were a dime a dozen in those days. If I didn’t have my own I’d be looked upon strangely, and disadvantaged politically. Also, I wouldn’t be interfering with the power structure of any other religious group, so that’s pretty much a total non-concern.
Land would be cheap and plentiful because it wouldn’t be seen as a viable resource for crop harvesting.
Wait… where else would they harvest crops, if not on land ? They don’t have hydroponics...
That said, it’s entirely possible that I overestimated the value of land as compared to a patrician’s salary, so you could have a point.
Nothing. Well, except that I’d be rotating the guards and so on.
That’s just a recipe for more leaks, IMO.
Plus; nobody would want what they were selling, at least for the first few years. And by then it really wouldn’t much matter—I’d already have the ramp-up I needed to maintain first-mover advantage.
I think your timetable is at odds with your secrecy requirements. If you truly became wildly successful in just a few short years, as is your plan, then everyone would want what you have. Sure, many people would look for the secret magical golden apple that you stole from the Titans or something, but a few smarter ones would come after your peasants, artisans, middle-managers, household slaves, and anyone else who could have knowledge about your operation.
That’s also one additional reason why I’d chosen a “backwater” or “rural” area to bootstrap in: there will be far fewer ‘educated’ men to deal with, and I will be able to ramp up—initially—in relative isolation.
Again, this strategy is at odds with your aggressive goals. Sure, you’ll see a lot less industrial espionage, but you’ll also have a much smaller pool of skilled, mentally flexible artisans to draw upon. Speaking of which:
A few months per project at most. Task specialization would be used.
This claim sounds extraordinary to me. It has been my personal experience (which, admittedly, is entirely anecdotal) that, in the modern world, training a fresh computer science graduate to become moderately productive on a real software project takes about a month; I recall reading somewhere that one to three months is the common figure. And that’s just a CS graduate being trained to do what he studied for ! You are proposing to introduce entirely new concepts during the same period of time, in order to build complex (and expensive) physical objects, not software constructs. I think you’ll need more time.
The schools—the part where I mentioned ‘”skepticism, falsificationism, logic, mathematics” and birth control’—are not vital or even very contributive to the plan as described.
Fair enough.
Also, I wouldn’t be interfering with the power structure of any other religious group, so that’s pretty much a total non-concern.
You would be, at the end of your five-year-plan. It’s one thing to say, “I’m the chosen of Vulcan because I saw an eagle flying upside down once”. Everyone says stuff like that. It’s a wholly different thing to say, “I’m the chosen of Vulcan because he gave me all this divine hypertech, and look, it’s fwackooming your magistrate as we speak”. Priests of all kinds—including those of Vulcan—would take you seriously then, and I’m not sure if you want that.
Wait… where else would they harvest crops, if not on land ? They don’t have hydroponics...
… perhaps I did not write sufficiently clearly. The land quality of the area is such that most who lived there would only be able to live subsistence-style lives. This is one reason why the land was a traditional recruiting grounds for the armies; enlisting was basically the only way to drag yourself out of poverty.
That’s just a recipe for more leaks, IMO.
What can they leak? They’re guards, not technicians. It’s not like even if I had technical schematics that stealing them would do any good: they didn’t HAVE technical schematics in those days. They’d have to not merely steal said schematics (which I wouldn’t even create in the first place) -- they would have to also take someone who was trained in how to read them. You and I both know that it’s possible to fabricate a CPU using photolithography on silicon wafers. Who can you sell the knowledge of this possibility to? What would they be able to achieve with it? Does knowing about photolithography enable you to read—let alone DRAW—an x86 chip core? I’m sorry, but I don’t find your opinion worth even considering any further on this point. If you can’t tell the difference between the kind of knowledge that comprises technical competence and the kind of knowledge that comprises awareness of technical competence—I’m not sure why your opinion matters here.
I think your timetable is at odds with your secrecy requirements.
See the above. You’re confusing awareness of new technologies with the ability to create them. These are not even remotely similar. I have already stated—repeatedly, I believe? -- that I just don’t care who knows about what I can do. I’m only preserving the secrets of how to actually do it.
You are proposing to introduce entirely new concepts during the same period of time, in order to build complex (and expensive) physical objects, not software constructs. I think you’ll need more time.
Déformation professionnelle. I do not require the technicians producing the goods to understand what they are doing. I need only for them to understand their one single piece of the process.
Furthermore, unlike software development, mechanical products are VERY susceptible to industrial line-assembly techniques. I would have ten or fifteen people—a main blacksmith and his journeymen and his apprentices—to work with for each given product. They would in turn become miniature factories to crank out their chosen products, and would be able to upskill/train others by including them in the line. This reduces vastly the technical complexity of any given ‘piece of the pie’.
Further still; software engineering requires a whole swath of cognitive skills—logical analysis, creative design, high working memory for retention of relevant details, etc., etc., that the rote assembly of parts simply does not require. I would be the one providing the designs for all of this equipment. The technicians and blacksmiths would simply be crafting the same design over and over again.
Think of it like coding the same quicksort algorithm over and over again, after being literally walked through it the first time keystroke by keystroke. Even a monkey could be so trained to code in relatively short orter. In the software world, this would be a useless thing to be doing. Not so for the manufacture of material goods.
You would be, at the end of your five-year-plan. It’s one thing to say, “I’m the chosen of Vulcan because I saw an eagle flying upside down once”. Everyone says stuff like that.
Honestly, no—I really wouldn’t be. The technical wherewithal of the mystery cults was significantly greater than the local populations possessed as it was. The aeolipile, for example, was used by mystery cults to automatically open and close doors. The first coin-operated machine was a holy-water dispensor -- (created by the same guy who made the aeolipile—the steam engine—famous; Hero[t]).
Everyone of any wealth either had a mystery cult of their own, or else belonged to a mystery cult of their own. And their membership was not mutually exclusive. The power structure of the polytheistic organizations of the day was absolutely and utterly alien to the priesthood of the monotheistic churches we know today.
The land quality of the area is such that most who lived there would only be able to live subsistence-style lives.
That makes more sense, yeah.
It’s not like even if I had technical schematics that stealing them would do any good: they didn’t HAVE technical schematics in those days… If you can’t tell the difference between the kind of knowledge that comprises technical competence and the kind of knowledge that comprises awareness of technical competence...
You are compartmentalizing the facts too much, and missing the bigger picture. Put yourself into the shoes of your ambitious, greedy and moderately smart neighbour—let’s call him Avaritus. He knows that you have begun extracting wealth from what was formerly known as a financial Tartarus of a plantation. He knows that your peasants and smiths are now equipped with various hitherto unknown devices. He has no idea how these things work, only that they do. He knows that your guards can be bought (or otherwise influenced). He doesn’t know what “technical schematics” are, but he does know what “trained personnel” are. If you were Avaritus, what would you do at this point ?
I’m only preserving the secrets of how to actually do it.
Are you building everything yourself, personally, or are you training people to do it for you ? If it’s the latter, then your secret knowledge isn’t hidden, it’s just scattered. If your employees are capable of any form of communication, then the knowledge can be reconstructed. More on this below:
Furthermore, unlike software development, mechanical products are VERY susceptible to industrial line-assembly techniques.
That’s true. But those techniques, in turn, are dependent on being able to crank out identical items to very high degrees of tolerance. Thus, at the very minimum, all of your smiths (and I doubt that your plantation would initially have more than a couple of smiths living there) will have to be trained to manufacture items to an absurd (to them) degree of tolerance, as well as in assembly-line techniques. This will take time—more time than you seem to think—and, in and of itself, constitutes a piece of secret knowledge that’s almost trivially easy to steal.
software engineering requires a whole swath of cognitive skills—logical analysis, creative design, high working memory for retention of relevant details, etc., etc., that the rote assembly of parts simply does not require.
It does, if you want your pistons to actually fit inside your cylinders once the smiths make each part separately..
Everyone of any wealth either had a mystery cult of their own, or else belonged to a mystery cult of their own.
Did their mystery cults paint big targets on themselves, by proclaiming, “look, I’ve got a flying machine” ?
Put yourself into the shoes of your ambitious, greedy and moderately smart neighbour—let’s call him Avaritus.
Here the region I’d be moving into would play some effect. The plantations that did exist in the plains of Spain were geographically isolated from one another. Most of the people in the area would’ve been hardscrobble farmers barely living at-or-above subsistence. And them I’d be actually helping out by-and-large (by way of expanding my economic empire.)
Many of the simpler techniques I’d want to get spreading out; it would make it easier for me to expand my influence. I’d be able to offer trade/transport of goods and the services related; I’d be able to capitalize fractional-reserve-banking to help bootstrap up my neighbors—just not as far as me—and so on. I would only for the first year or two rely upon direct production of goods, as opposed to becoming the financier to the production and transport of said goods. That’s what step 4 was all about.
I would also, however, have to hide the efficacy and usefulness of my weaponry. I suppose I could sell leafspring crossbows to the guardsmen for other local plantation owners. The technical expertise needed to reproduce them would still be fairly high, and their rate of fire would be atrociously low (Even an expert crossbowman would take upwards of fifteen seconds to recock the bow.)
Thus, at the very minimum, all of your smiths (and I doubt that your plantation would initially have more than a couple of smiths living there) will have to be trained to manufacture items to an absurd (to them) degree of tolerance,
I’d have to recruit smiths from other geographic areas. Not very difficult. I could also have journeymen upskilled somewhat more quickly, given the use of machine tooling and metalcasting. (Push comes to shove there’s also tDCS to increase learning rates.)
This will take time—more time than you seem to think—and, in and of itself, constitutes a piece of secret knowledge that’s almost trivially easy to steal.
You keep insisting on this. I see absolutely no reason to take your insistence seriously. One or two weeks at most would be sufficient for them to “get the idea” of line assembly. It’s a very simple concept. And I also don’t really care if it gets out. Let it. The primary thing that I need to maintain technological secrecy on is the actual assembly of the air rifles. Everything else is an ‘expendable’ secret. Even that is too. And even then; that’s why I’m keeping the guards present with orders to kill defectors or apparent defectors amongst the technicians. And said technicians won’t have any real way of leaving the plantations—so people would have to come to them. The guards would be kept under rotation to ensure bribery is less effective, and I could also implement other forms of information security (listening devices of various technical levels—radio transmitters or secret listening tubes—and other forms of spying. Honeypot traps to test the loyalty of both guards and technicians by giving fake opportunities to defect, etc., etc..) And lastly—again, I think you’re strongly overestimating the amount of time it would take to first notice the manufacture, second plan to adopt them, third achieve the stealing of the tech, and fourth manage to do so at any scale at all. Especially since unlike anyone stealing these techs, I would know what to look for and their value. Which means I could engage in secret sabotage and assassination to eliminate/foil early imitators.
Technological advantage isn’t about secrecy. It can’t be about secrecy. What it is about is the rapid leverage of gaps in technical competence. All of my efforts above aren’t meant to stop the spread of the new techniques—that’s literally impossible. Instead, they are meant to impede their spread outside of my controlled areas of influence.
If I wanted to be especially absurd I could also use things like aerosolized oxytocin to artificially increase the loyalty of my guards and technicians to me personally. Plus, I could select guards whose children I’d saved the lives of. (Remember; I’m planning to use medicine to increase devotion/personal loyalty amongst the peasantry.) And so on.
It does, if you want your pistons to actually fit inside your cylinders once the smiths make each part separately..
There would not be any pistons. Are you simply not familiar with aeolipiles or other forms of turbine engines?
Did their mystery cults paint big targets on themselves, by proclaiming, “look, I’ve got a flying machine” ?
I find this inscrutable. What’s your point? What are you driving at? Why is this a relevant thing to be saying/asking?
Most of the people in the area would’ve been hardscrobble farmers barely living at-or-above subsistence. And them I’d be actually helping out by-and-large (by way of expanding my economic empire.)
Fair enough, but this doesn’t eliminate the problem of Avaritus, it just pushes it toward a later stage, and makes him a bigger player (since, by the time you encounter him, you will be a bigger player).
Many of the simpler techniques I’d want to get spreading out...
You seem to be assuming, throughout this thread, that your knowledge is unique, and so are your plans. Other people might be able to steal it, or learn it from you, but they wouldn’t be able to figure it out for themselves. In some cases, this is an entirely warranted assumption—no one in Ancient Rome could even conceive of a vacuum tube—but in other cases, the inferential distance is much shorter. Things like pulleys and fractional reserve banking are self-evident once they are deployed; they’re kind of like HTML and “view source” that way. Transparency is inherent in the functionality.
And as for your long-term strategic plans… well, if you were Avaritus, and you learned of a freshly-minted Patrician who is generating massive wealth, hiring up a bunch of smiths, buying metal in bulk, and is engaged in secret military maneuvers—what conclusion would you make from this ?
Remember that, while these Romans are (as specified in the scenario setup) dumber than you, they’re not total idiots.
I would also, however, have to hide the efficacy and usefulness of my weaponry.
How will you accomplish this ? After all, you’ll need to train your soldiers in the use of your weaponry. Wouldn’t they all have to be in on the secret ? How many soldiers are you planning on training ? How will you guarantee their unshakeable loyalty and discretion ?
One or two weeks at most would be sufficient for them to “get the idea” of line assembly.
There are modern classes you can take on assembly line training. They take longer than two weeks, and they assume that the audience can read, write, and add, at the very least, which is more than I can say for your backwater Roman peasants. At this point, I’d like to see you produce some evidence that your two-week training period would be sufficient.
In addition, have you personally ever tried to construct something relatively simple, like the Giordani air rifle, in your garage in the modern world, using modern tools (other than, possibly, CNC) ? How long did it take you ?
And even then; that’s why I’m keeping the guards present with orders to kill defectors or apparent defectors amongst the technicians.
Who death-watches the death-watchers ? In the rest of the paragraph, you discuss various methods for turning your plantation into a police state, but that type of thing makes your men even less loyal than they’d normally be, and becomes a full-time 24⁄7 endeavour after a while.
Especially since unlike anyone stealing these techs, I would know what to look for and their value.
If I were Avaritus, I’d focus on stealing one of your assembled prototypes (remember, I know that you have them, I just don’t know what they are). It would be easier than stealing your actual smiths, though that’s an option, too.
Technological advantage isn’t about secrecy. It can’t be about secrecy. What it is about is the rapid leverage of gaps in technical competence.
At last we can agree on something; but then, why are you so focused on all the rotating death-watch guards ? Why bother keeping anything a secret at all ?
There would not be any pistons. Are you simply not familiar with aeolipiles or other forms of turbine engines?
I used pistons and cylinders as a convenient example tolerances that matter. High-pressure valves in your pneumatics would be another example; even the feeding mechanism for your rifles would need to be fairly precise, in order to avoid jamming. But I do confess that I have trouble seeing how you’d use actual aeolipiles for industrial-grade applications; I was assuming that you were using the word to refer to the general class of heat engines, but maybe I was wrong.
Why is this a relevant thing to be saying/asking?
Your financial, political, and military success is directly proportional to the number of enemies you end up making. As you build your empire, making the right kinds of enemies (weak, easily crushable ones) will become increasingly important. Priests are the wrong kinds of enemies.
Fair enough, but this doesn’t eliminate the problem of Avaritus, it just pushes it toward a later stage, and makes him a bigger player (since, by the time you encounter him, you will be a bigger player).
Good. That means a stronger economy for me to work with. Especially since, if he were really my neighbor, I would very likely have a strong business relationship with him by then, providing fertilizer, transportation, and banking services for him. If he manages to steal a few of my technologies… GOOD. That makes him my ally. In all likelihood I would probably be setting up client sub-patricians as a surrounding buffer to myself anyhow, and feeding them inferior versions of my technologies for them to work with.
There are modern classes you can take on assembly line training. They take longer than two weeks, and they assume that the audience can read, write, and add, at the very least, which is more than I can say for your backwater Roman peasants. At this point, I’d like to see you produce some evidence that your two-week training period would be sufficient.
They’re also producing vastly more complicated products. And are training general assembly workers—workers who can move freely from line-position to line-position. Using a vast array of modern tools in dynamic situations. Exactly the opposite of what I’d be doing. Your objection just doesn’t hold water. You’re making assumptions about what I’d be doing that directly contradict what I have explained I’d be doing.
It’s making any hope of this dialogue go anywhere quite vanishingly small. What part of: “I would train individual workers in individual rote tasks and ONLY those tasks” is such a difficult concept for you to grasp? Why is this such a cognitive stumbling block for you? You keep doing everything in your power to misunderstand me on this point.
Why?
In addition, have you personally ever tried to construct something relatively simple, like the Giordani air rifle, in your garage in the modern world, using modern tools (other than, possibly, CNC) ? How long did it take you ?
The Giardoni air rifle is not “simple” to make by hand. While the metalsmiths of Rome frequently had the skillset necessary to achieve it, I myself do not. It also required a number of small-ish parts that would not be obvious as to their function in a damaged state. It could be reverse-engineered, certainly, but without an understanding of the mechanical principles involved the mere process of reverse-engineering it and constructing a successful prototype would take as long as a year even for a skilled metalsmith. If we presume merely a three month window for that, it would STILL take at least that long for that metalsmith to train others in its making, and without line-assembly to assist him in so crafting the numbers they could turn out would be far, far smaller. And the rate of fire available to others given the lack of motorized pumps would be far smaller than it would be for my troops. Which is part of the point: all of the technologies selected contribute to one another in non-trivial ways. Extracting the secrets of one or two of the above would result in a bootstrapping period of their own that would also be significantly inferior to my own.
If I were Avaritus, I’d focus on stealing one of your assembled prototypes (remember, I know that you have them, I just don’t know what they are). It would be easier than stealing your actual smiths, though that’s an option, too.
This wouldn’t become an issue until at earliest the third year. And even then the process of reverse engineering without foreknowledge of the actual function of all given parts is less than spectacularly useful.
Also—without a ready fuel supply both the engines and the guns (which are being recharged via motorized pumps, remember) -- would be at best far less effective for any outside agent. And the methylation process itself (along with distillation) would also be subjecct to deathwatch scrutiny, so as to suppress their adoption time by outside actors.
At last we can agree on something; but then, why are you so focused on all the rotating death-watch guards ? Why bother keeping anything a secret at all ?
What exactly is it about the concept of “trade secrets” that you are having such a difficult time grasping? Why is it that you can’t figure out—despite my repeatedly explaining this to you—that there is a HUGE difference between “knowing about” a thing and “mastering” a thing?? What exactly is it about the concept of “maintaining technological advantage” that you don’t get? I don’t care if the secrets get out the slow way. That’s fine. But I can certainly work to maintain my technological advantage for a longer window. And the best way to do that is to suppress the direct transmission of technical competence away from those areas under my control.
By making it harder to bribe or kidnap or cause the defection/capture of my technicians I reduce the flow of information outwards. Seriously—why is this a difficult concept for you?
Again: I’m not depending on a total suppression of knowledge. That would be pointless and idiotic. Instead I am working with the first mover advantage. I liinked you to the Wikipedia article on First Mover Advantages already. Please actually read that link, and stop bringing this topic up.
This is not a legitimate objection on your part. Please stop bringing it up.
Your financial, political, and military success is directly proportional to the number of enemies you end up making.
Financial, political, and military success each create more allies and friends than they do enemies. Especially if you are gracious to your enemies.
Priests are the wrong kinds of enemies.
You don’t understand religion in Rome, then. Priests were essentially irrelevant. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. There was no such thing as a centralized, powerful religious body in Rome. It didn’t exist. “Priests” did not have political power in the Roman era. That’s just not how the structure of the day worked. Mystery cults were numerous and plentiful—and small. What individuals within a given cult that did have power had said power not because of their religious affiliations but in spite of it.
This, too, is an entirely spurious concern on your part. Please stop raising it.
But I do confess that I have trouble seeing how you’d use actual aeolipiles for industrial-grade applications; I was assuming that you were using the word to refer to the general class of heat engines, but maybe I was wrong.
Because I wouldn’t use them in industrial-grade applications. I would use simple, low-efficiency turbines. And I wouldn’t use them in “industrial applications”. I would use them as power trains for wagons and to power ultralights. Also, you’re strongly underestimating the technical competence of roman metallurgists of the era. Especially after having introduced metal-casting (or sintering) to the era. Cock valves, for example, were in widespread use—and in massive dimensions—at the time, as well as hand-carried water-pumps.
So again, no single item I’d be introducing would—in and of itself—be far outside of the scope of the competencies of the Roman era. But to adopt all of them? Even by reverse-engineering after being exposed to the existence of the concept, adopting more than a handful here-and-there would require several years.
And by then I’d already be in possession of vast sums of money and materials, at which point having trade partners I could use to accelerate my acquisition of the needed materials, parts, and equipment to achieve my ends would only be beneficial to me.
Remember, also, that I’d have a buffer zone of several hundred miles between myself and the nearest actual city, and would otherwise be surrounded almost exclusively by the kinds of people the word “pagani” originally referred to: rednecks. This was not an accident. The geographical placement in mind was also designed to help suppress the dissemination of my technologies outside of my scope of influence.
Your goals of secrecy and widespread economic development are in direct conflict.
You underestimate the time it would take to execute your plans.
You underestimate the social opposition to your plans which would develop once you began making progress.
With this in mind:
Good. That means a stronger economy for me to work with. … GOOD. That makes him my ally. In all likelihood I would probably be setting up client sub-patricians as a surrounding buffer to myself anyhow, and feeding them inferior versions of my technologies for them to work with.
Great, but then, why do you need all the death-watching rotating uber-guards ? Why not just make your technologies available at a reasonable cost ? You’re going to be one step ahead of the competition no matter what, so what do you have to gain by keeping secrets ? Do these gains outstrip the productivity losses and potential PR disasters ?
They’re also producing vastly more complicated products. And are training general assembly workers—workers who can move freely from line-position to line-position. Using a vast array of modern tools in dynamic situations. Exactly the opposite of what I’d be doing.
I was under the impression that what you’d be doing is, training your smiths to crank out plow/rifle/air pump/aircraft parts to precise tolerances. This process would start by explaining to them the concept of “tolerances”. This can be done, and it can be done relatively quickly, but not as quickly as you claim—especially since, as you say, “there is a HUGE difference between “knowing about” a thing and “mastering” a thing”. Every time I bring up the potential difficulties involved, you just assert your position more boldly. At this point, I need to see some evidence. This is why I asked you whether you personally ever tried to construct an air rifle, to which you replied:
The Giardoni air rifle is not “simple” to make by hand. While the metalsmiths of Rome frequently had the skillset necessary to achieve it, I myself do not.
Your character in this game we’re playing would have the detailed schematics for the Giardoni air rifle memorized. Do you believe that, therefore, he would have not only the “skillset necessary to achieve it”, but also the ability to teach it to average provincial smiths in Ancient Rome ? Or look at it in this way: you are not your character, but you have access to the Internet, so you don’t need to memorize stuff. How long would it take you, today, using modern hand-operated tools, to manufacture a working Giardoni air rifle ?
There was no such thing as a centralized, powerful religious body in Rome. It didn’t exist. “Priests” did not have political power in the Roman era.
No, they did not, but they had the power to excite a population, just like they do in any other era.
I would use them as power trains for wagons and to power ultralights.
Ok, so I guess I don’t understand what you mean by “aeolipiles”. Can you explain what an aeolipile drive for an ultralight, yet heavier-than-air craft would look like (or, preferably, link me to the relevant Wikipedia article) ? Or possibly I misunderstood what you meant by “ultralights”; perhaps you actually meant “lighter than air” ?
The geographical placement in mind was also designed to help suppress the dissemination of my technologies outside of my scope of influence.
In this case, where will you procure your raw materials, and what will you trade for them ? You can have isolation, or you can’t have trade, but, historically, it has proven impossible to have both.
I have downvoted your comment. I have done so because you continue to raise spurious objections to positions I do not hold and insist that I address them.
This is contradictory of rational discourse and as such should be discouraged on LessWrong.
No, you downvoted me in retaliation. Your arguments are spurious and I have repeatedly identified them as this. I have repeatedly rejected your insistence that I’m “depending on secrecy”. I have repeatedly attempted to explain to you the difference between ‘secrecy’ and conservation of technical competence. I have repeatedly explained how I would be able to both engage in trade/commerce and maintain relative geographic isolation relative to all other actors of the era. Case in point: your most recent reiterated objection:
I was under the impression that what you’d be doing is, training your smiths to crank out plow/rifle/air pump/aircraft parts to precise tolerances. This process would start by explaining to them the concept of “tolerances”.
-- This is false. I have explained this to be false. No such concepts would be conveyed. Instead, the line workers would be trained to make parts in an exacting manner and be given tools necessary to that end. Notched gauges for example. No conceptual explanations would be needed—only rote mechanical actions. I stated essentially exactly this, more than once. (Providing such conceptual frameworks rather than rote memorization of tasks would, furthermore, allow for the easier dissemination of technical competence outside of my control. A goal contradictory to my ends.)
Your response was to claim that I reacted by “merely making my claims bolder”. The problem with this, of course, is that your objections were invalid from the outset—they did NOT map to anything I was claiming. Take for further example on this very topic your usage of the general line assemblyman course as a ‘citation’ for your objection.
It was wholly and entirely inappropriate to the task of acting as a valid citation for an objection to what I was claiming for the simple reason that it did not address any claims of mine.
You continue to raise these objections despite their entirely spurious nature, and you continue to demand in this dialogue that I address these objections.
This is, as I said previously, contradictory of rational discourse and as such should be discouraged on LessWrong. I noted this and you in return downvoted me claiming the same of me as I have made clear of your positions.
This, too, is spurious and irrational behavior and as such should bee discouraged on LessWrong.
Step 2: Introduce the horse-collar, the plow, ‘terra preta’ (tilling of charcoal), fertilizer (easiest in this case: baked pig manure), insecticide, pennicillin, and wind-mill-powered pumped irrigation. These things together will result in massive harvests at low costs. They will also ensure that my peasants’ children don’t die, and are well-fed. My wealth will after one or two years of this expand massively. The absence of disease will also enable me to convince the local population that I am favored of the gods.
Usable penicillin is very difficult to acquire. The penicillin mold simply doesn’t produce very much, and the chemical produced is unstable. It took a ten-year project to get a stabilized version that could be injected, and the first penicillin pill wasn’t made until 1952.
Also, windmills and waterwheels already existed. And where are you going to get an insecticide from, anyway?
It took a ten-year project to get a stabilized version that could be injected,
The technical knowledge of which I would be in possession of. And therefore know how to shortcut to the end product. Three or four rounds of experimental trials, each taking a couple of weeks, followed by intentional use of radical selection pressure to generate a strain that has the desired properties. Given the generational periodicity of 1 week per round, six months at most would be sufficient to produce a working product. (Also; deep tank fermentation was a large part of why pennicillin would be available in bulk to me. A larger problem would be the probenecid production, but that’s a different story.)
Also—the fact that pennicillin wasn’t available in our history until 1952 in pill form wouldn’t be much of an impediment nor even really an interesting question.
Also, windmills and waterwheels already existed.
Windmills, yes. In the hands of Persians, not in Romans. And they weren’t moving quantities of water—classical mechanics as we know it today was not ‘invented’ until over a thousand years later.
And where are you going to get an insecticide from, anyway?
Major barrier right at the start: buying a little chunk of land is one thing, but a bunch of the stuff in step 2 will require very large capital outlays by the standards of the time—especially the mill.
There’s a reason automation didn’t catch on before the industrial revolution: capital was scarce and peasants were abundant. It wouldn’t be easy to actually produce crops more cost-effectively than peasant labor, when the peasant labor is absurdly cheap. Things like fertilizer could help, but even that will run into problems—people don’t like poop on their food, and chemical fertilizer/insecticide requires relatively complicated manufacturing facilities.
Forgive my ignorance, but is introducing penicillin such a good idea? It would provide a considerable advantage in the short-term, but once the cat gets out of the bag and the knowledge spreads to the rest of the Empire (I assume it’s not that difficult to manufacture), you’d have antibiotic resistance everywhere, and no international medical community to clamp down on over-prescription.
Additionally, showing off what biodiesel can do might kickstart general fossil fuel extraction before the technology exists to monitor pollution and greenhouse gas levels.
Re: drug resistance—that takes decades to become a problem. By then I’d be soundly in control and could disseminate germ theory freely. I’d need to introduce other antibiotics as well but I’d have the ability to do so easily.
Introduction of biodiesel would bypass the adoption/usage of fossil fuels. Also, the population-at-large would be significantly smaller and would reach postindustrial status at a population far, far smaller than modern population.
Would disseminating germ theory really help all that much? Rome itself might have been a fairly literate society, but in the time it would take to overcome all the inferential distances in just the educated classes, the drug would have spread like wildfire through the rest of Europe and the Near East by merchants hoping to make a quick sesterce from selling the “miracle cure” to the peasantry.
The Romans already believed something very similar to germ theory: that diseases were caused by an invisible contagion that was passed through contact/exposure to those already infested by it.
Also, I would be the primary distributor and manufacturer of pennicillin; so I could have some control over how it was distributed. Ensuring it got into the hands first of medics trained in my courses—I.e.; people who knew about germ theory—would be trivial.
Years six through ten depend on unforseen variables for whether there will be protracted suppression of luddites and conservatives, or if my reputation precedes me sufficiently that Rome begs me to induct her into my Constitutional Republic of Aligned City-States.
Through a careful management of new agricultural, medical, economic, industrial, and military technologies as above, conquering Rome would be easily achievable within 5-10 years at the absolute most.
Silly Logos01. Do you think you will get any of this done in a Constitutional Republic? In practice the Rome of the first century AD would be more a Republic than what you would need to get this done
If this worked you would de facto be God Emperor of Hispania or the state would be a plutocracy with you as the wealthiest man in the world. Once you die good luck trying to set up a workable republican culture, or people following anything but the forms of your proposed system of government. Social engineering is hard.
But in any case that isn’t the goal here and I wouldn’t be too upset in any case. Long live the Leviathan!
Silly Logos01. Do you think you will get any of this done in a Constitutional Republic?
Well, I’d start out as god-emperor and dictator for life, but I’d try to keep myself from having an actual successor… (even if it didn’t really work, just introducing the notion would eventually cause it to stabilize to that effect.)
or people following anything but the forms of your proposed system of government. Social engineering is hard.
Indeed. Luckily these folks would not yet have been immunized to Nazi-style propaganda campaigns or other forms of indoctrination. This is one additional reason why I focused on propaganda and publication. I’d expect to face certain failure in achieving the total optimal result, but could at the very least implement a tendency towards these models.
If I treat myself as an aberration to the system, and create a power structure that could survive me—assuming I had a good fifty or so years to institutionalize it in the eyes and ears of mankind, I could spend the last ten or fifteen years gradually introducing the parliamentary rule; handing over more and more political power to the Senate in a graceful manner, until I’m seen as more of an advisory role than an actual power figure. That would be an end-state goal, though.
Luckily these folks would not yet have been immunized to Nazi-style propaganda campaigns or other forms of indoctrination.
I’m having a hard time thinking of any population that is. I mean sure we won’t see a rise in Nazism in our life times but that’s because the Nazi’s lost the war, not because people became immune to their propaganda techniques. If anything modern propaganda techniques are much better and we are even more helpless against them.
I’m having a hard time thinking of any population that is [...] immune to their propaganda techniques.
Immunized != Immune.
If anything modern propaganda techniques are much better and we are even more helpless against them.
It’s an arms-race. Nazi-style propagandizing included use of radio and television, and control over print media, as well as sponsored postings of visual posters and the like in public spaces. These things are what I was referring to; and people today are relatively immune to such “crass” techniques, which is why modern propaganda techniques are so much more sophisticated: the “old” ones stopped being sufficiently effective.
If we consider propaganda a form of virulent memeplex, then the immunological model describes quite well the history of and reactions to various forms of propaganda by the common populace over time: first there is exposure to a new “strain”, and then people become resistant to it in a very similar manner to how we become resistant to various viruses.
I wonder if anyone has ever studied Third World propaganda campaigns over time to demonstrate an ‘evolution’ which recapitulates Western evolution in propaganda?
(I mention this because I saw recently the old example of Liberia’s Charles Taylor who was elected when he ‘campaigned on the slogan “He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him.”’. Of course, his landslide was probably due to “the belief that he would resume the war if he lost.” which is why one would want multiple countries. Do they all show this sort of phenomenon where laughably crude propaganda and campaigning works initially and is slowly replaced by subtler psy-ops, or is there no evolution because crude propaganda works best on those of low IQ, say?)
I would imagine that any researcher who confirmed such an effect would refrain from publishing, and instead become the supreme dictator of some third world country.
Luckily these folks would not yet have been immunized to Nazi-style propaganda campaigns or other forms of indoctrination.
As GLaDOS points out, nobody’s really immune, as such, but it wasn’t a new tactic. ‘Demagogue’ is a Greek word, and the techniques involved had been known for centuries before 1AD. Take the brothers Grachii as your bar; if you can manipulate public opinion more smoothly than they did, you might have a shot.
Immunization does not provide perfect immunity. I was referring to the specific techniques and methods used by the Nazis for propagandizing; broadcasts, posters plastered everywhere, and so on, and so on. People today are relatively immunized against blithely trusting the validity of government-sponsored statements. This was not true before that time.
People today are relatively immunized against blithely trusting the validity of government-sponsored statements. This was not true before that time.
My model of humanity has them cynical enough that they stopped being blithely trusting of the validity of government-sponsored statements about ten minutes after the emergence in prehistory of something which could be loosely described as ‘government’.
The history of the efficacy of the propaganda used by both the “Axis Powers” in WWII and the Allies in WWII would tend to conflict with your model, insofar as I understand both sets of data.
“Rosie the Riveter” was a purely government-sponsored fabrication, and yet women signed up to work in factories by the thousands as a result of said campaign. German introduction of anti-semitism literally introduced the practice in Japan—beforehand the Japanese people had a view of Jews that was quite the opposite (i.e.; that they were a ‘superior people’) … which is why before the German/Japanese alliance got fully implemented, the Japanese had an active recruiting campaign for Jewish persons.
There are a vast swathe of such examples from that era. None of these techniques are effective today. See: “Tobacco is Whack-o”, “This is your brain on drugs”, etc., etc..
These include factories, vacuum tubes (and through them early-tech varieties of computers), birth control and other forms of concerns for quality-of-life, and various forms of chemistry and so on.
Are you sure this is a good idea considering modern Western civilization hasn’t yet demonstrated the survivability of such technology? Let alone an upstart society in underpopulated Roman Spain. In any case the ancients did know means of birth control and it at various points sapped the power of the Roman state.
Silphium was reputed to have birth controlling properties because its seeds were heart-shaped. I was talking about something a little more… reliable… such as, say, Premarin.
As to the survivability of such technology—TFR explosions are a problem. birth control would be introduced to cut down overpopulation resultant from implementing immunological practices (vaccination and antibiotics.) The problems of modern fertility rate have far, far less to do with birth control and far more to do with the economics of raising children in a postindustrial environment. Even then, it turns out that TFR is showing a reversal of the declining trend in the last few years.
Overall I’d say there’s pretty little to worry about. Especially since I’d have a good five decades of longevity to play with; I could pretty reliably introduce computing and electronics within that window, and that would be enough to ensure humanity develop AGI sometime in the next few centuries.
Silphium was reputed to have birth controlling properties because its seeds were heart-shaped. I was talking about something a little more… reliable… such as, say, Premarin.
You got it wrong. It is the other way around.
There has been some speculation about the connection between silphium and the traditional heart shape (♥). The symbol is remarkably similar to the Egyptian “heart soul” (ib). The sexual nature of that concept, combined with the widespread use of silphium in ancient Egypt for birth control, and the fact that silphium seeds were heart-shaped, leads to speculation that the character for ib may have been derived from the shape of the silphium seed.
Step 1: Purchase a plantation in the Spanish province (A traditional harvesting grounds for recruiting of soldiers. Few citizens, mostly considered ‘backwater’ at the time.)
Step 2: Introduce the horse-collar, the plow, ‘terra preta’ (tilling of charcoal), fertilizer (easiest in this case: baked pig manure), insecticide, pennicillin, and wind-mill-powered pumped irrigation. These things together will result in massive harvests at low costs. They will also ensure that my peasants’ children don’t die, and are well-fed. My wealth will after one or two years of this expand massively. The absence of disease will also enable me to convince the local population that I am favored of the gods.
Step 3a: Utilize newfound wealth and the introduction of the pulley, the A-Frame, and the leaf-spring to build a fleet of Conastoga wagons for transport of crops and local goods at faster rates than anyone else could accomplish. Additionally introduce the water screw and associate it with the aeolipile (already-existing but unutilized historically) for water transport. Introduce distilling for alcohol (another trade good) and also for methalization of olive oil for biodiesel for fuel for simple steam-turbine engines (aeolipile --> low-efficiency turbine pretty easily). These will then be the power-train for both Conastogas and for boats, again increasing mobility of my products.
Step 3b. Reinvent the Girandoni air rifle. Work with metalsmiths under my control to do so. These rifles are 20-shot .46-caliber air-powered rifles first used for military applications in the 1780′s. While technically difficult to create, the metalsmiths of Rome could accomplish this. These smiths would be kept under death-watch; 24⁄7 watch of guards dedicated to keeping the secret by killing any smith who was about to be captured or defected. Said smiths will otherwise be granted lives of utter luxury. Equip motorized Conastogas w/ flame throwers. Recruit/conscript local peasantry into service in newly minted mobilized infantry.
Step 3c. Aeolipile/turbine biodiesel engines provide sufficient weight/power ratio for ultralight aircraft. Constructing a small core of these and training young-teen pilots will enable scouting profiles unlike that of any people to have come before. These will not, however, be available until the third or fourth year, as building the frames will require bamboo grown from imported plants. (Some variety of phyllostachys, likely.) Amongst their other purposes, the bamboo shoots will be used to construct lightweight frames for ultralight craft. Coupled with simple radios, these would prove invaluable for distribution and acquisition of information. Between the mobilized infantry and ultralight air superiority, even a small force—say, four groups of ten wagons w/ twenty soldiers each, and five ultralights—would be an equal match to a single Roman legion despite being outnumbered several times over. (less than a thousand men vs. 11,000-16,000 men.) (Logistics are also an issue. But it’s relatively easy to beat that problem just by using blown-glass bottles and corking them while boiling.)
This lets my troops move faster and strike harder than any unit of traditional troops—several times over.
Step 4. Expanding my scope of influence. Establishing myself as a military force to be reckoned with, I will position myself for further trade for economic expansion before initiating aggressive hostilities. ( I want to wait until the Emperor’s people make the first move to ‘suppress’ me so when I come as a conqueror I have a plausible excuse; I was simply ‘defending’ myself against a mad emperor.) In so doing, I will introduce arabic numerals and double-entry book-keeping. This will enable me to engage in fractional-reserve banking and begin moneylending to foreign persons, thereby expanding my own wealth and influence. I will further develop a telegraph system to permit communication amongst disparate parties (and distract from the existence/use of radios, whose crafting will also be another ‘secret of the gods’, similar to the making of the rifles. Unlike the rifles, the radios will be far easier to be stolen. Need to plan ahead for encrypted communications.) Abaci, too, will be introduced for accountants.
At this point it is four to five years into “the plan”. I now own a massive swath of plantations, each of which are producing yields at unheard of rates. I will have introduced greenhouse farming for things like strawberries or rice for sustained harvests as well. My fleets of motorized wagons and steam-boats will be making an expanding circuit of influence. The peasants under my care will be practically immune to disease (vaccination and antibiotics.) -- an intentional campaign of propaganda (this will require introduction of the printing press and advances in grammar such as punctuation and word spacing [ !! ], as well as use of radios w/ loudspeakers for ‘town-square addresses’. ) will ensure that the people are suitably convinced that this is because I am the favored son of Vulcan, god of the forge. My troops will be invincible, and terrifying. (Ultralights could also be used to deliver non-inconsequential quantities of ‘greek fire’ (gelatinized biodiesel in this case) to ensure that enemy fortifications are essentially indefensible. This will spread fear and further reinforce the Vulcan-myth; I harness fire to move vehicles through the very air itself, and rain fire down from above.)
Years six through ten depend on unforseen variables for whether there will be protracted suppression of luddites and conservatives, or if my reputation precedes me sufficiently that Rome begs me to induct her into my Constitutional Republic of Aligned City-States.
Years 6+ will also involve the introduction of schools for training the children of regions in my control in basic rationality arts; skepticism, falsificationism, logic, mathematics, etc., etc.. They will also introduce further socioeconomic and technical advances that require a more advanced base than 0-year Rome possessed. These include factories, vacuum tubes (and through them early-tech varieties of computers), birth control and other forms of concerns for quality-of-life, and various forms of chemistry and so on.
Here’s why nowhere above did I mention gunpowder: it’s too easily stolen a technological advantage, and explosives in combat are too effective at reducing the advantage of disparity in technological gaps. One guy on horseback w/ a tube-launched gunpowder rocket could maul a Conastoga wagon; one hundred men with such weapons would eliminate the combat-efficacy of my above mobilized infantry. Mortars would be even worse. The same goes for the ultralights; they are defenseless against massed gunfire, AA weapons like rockets, and the like.
However—knowing this myself, I can keep that in reserve for the second-generation of technological-advantage combat revolution. Motorized bicycles or bronze-plated half-tread conastogas require more technical prowess initially but make for just as effective a force, especially if they too are using light cannon, rockets/mortars, and the like. Ultralights equipped with unguided mass-fire rockets are less valuable but after 6-10 years would be more expendable. And their value can be expanded through use of dirigibles as carriers. (Extended range plus heavier craft w/ more-powerful motors.)
Through a careful management of new agricultural, medical, economic, industrial, and military technologies as above, conquering Rome would be easily achievable within 5-10 years at the absolute most.
If one wishes to gamble more, one year would be the minimum necessary to assemble an elite corps of four hundred Girardoni air-rifle troops (coil-spring-driven boltguns would make clumsy but effective pistols for close-range combat in a pinch) riding motorized Conastogas equipped w/ flamethrowers, assuming we acted piratically, canniballizing a few small towns in the countryside to sustain ourselves through the build-up period. These would then be used to launch a Hannibal-esque strike upon Rome itself, designed to assassinate the Emperor and place myself upon the throne.
EDIT: I just realized that it’s possible to hand-solder transistors from raw materials (As well as capacitors and other similar parts). This means that it is possible to create electronic components using Roman-era tools to build the tools necessary to assemble said electronics. While they wouldn’t be up to snuff for modern designs, they would certainly be sufficient for crude robotics. Including ‘rapid’ prototypers. I was already failing to fully utilize my time during the aggri-business expansion (year 1) -- this would adjust for that. I could build machines to handle much of the industrial bootstrap up. (Gun manufacture in particular.) I wouldn’t even need blacksmiths for the guns or turbine-engines. Sintering, casting, and assembler-bots would be capable of producing the equipment as needed. (As was also noted to me by another person; clockwork automata can achieve complex if stereotyped patterns of behavior up to and including fine manual dexterity actions like uncorking and pouring bottles of wine. The industrial applications of this are immense. I wouldn’t even need gunsmiths or engine-smiths; I could instead automate the nearly entire process.)
Upvoted for detail and thoroughness, but I think you’re depending too much on the naivete of the natives. Step 3b is especially problematic; even if your guards are too loyal to sell you out (why?), you can’t conceal that you’re doing something in secret with a pack of metalsmiths. Just the fact that it’s a secret will be enough to get the provincial governor’s attention. That’s probably not the end: he may well be an incompetent ditherer, or venal enough to take bribes. But as soon as you start training your infantry, the clock starts: the emperor sends an envoy ordering you to turn over your new weapons, you refuse, you’re ordered to appear before a Roman court, you refuse, you’re declared to be in rebellion, and it’s on.
I think your one-year gamble is probably the better strategy for becoming emperor—maybe the best one, or close to it. Certainly the fastest. Surviving the next year would be tricky, though.
I’m only concerned about the technological prowess, not knowledge of its existence. I want to maintain my technological advantage. The guards can’t convey information they themselves lack; and I’d make sure the job was lucrative enough.
Well—plantation owners were allowed to maintain their own household troops (within reason) -- and I’d have fewer than a thousand such. It’d be pretty easy to hide the total number of individuals involved; especially since the efficacy of my troops would be totally inconceivable. Careful bribery of provincial leaders and arguments/justifications involving guarding my own wagons, keeping troops always on the move to make them less apparent.
Also—I’m expecting to face charges of rebellion; they are an integral part of the plan. It would be best if they didn’t come until somewhere between three and four years in. It’s important to recognize that the usual response to ‘wild’ stories of ‘incredible’ weapons is skepticism. There’s very strong odds that the initial inquiries/investigations would simply not recognize the scale/scope of the threat involved. But you are quite right; additional maskirovka should probably be involved to ensure that the total number of troops being trained is vastly under-reported. The usefulness of the weapons should also be down-played. It would be very easy (use clay bullets, undercharge the guns) to make it appear that they are only useful against poorly-armored highway robbers. That would stave off ‘official’ inquiries quite well.
The Romans as a culture placed a lot of stock in the notion that victory in combat represented worthiness as a person. You can coast pretty far on such a victory. Capitalizing on it would be tricky—how does one guarantee the loyalty of a personal elite guard?
Yeah, ok; you have more scope for camouflage than I appreciated at first. It will eventually become obvious that you’re training an army (you’ll have to train them to fight in formation, and volley, and things like that), but when the provincial governor shows up wanting to know what you plan to do with it, you might well be able to get away with saying “I’m planning to conquer Rome and install myself as emperor, and if you go along with it I’ll find you a nice fat province in the East to be governor of”. And if that doesn’t work, well, you probably can win a long campaign, it’s just really messy.
Indeed, but that doesn’t mean they’ll stop fighting you. Consider Cannae: most states would have sued for peace after so brutal an upset. Same deal after Arausio; the Romans were as proud and stiff-necked a people as have ever existed, China and America by no means excepted.
I’m planning on 20-man units, using modern infantry tactics (not much in the way of volleyed fire, nor pretty much anything in the way of formation firing). Also, air guns are quiet. So these aren’t really much of an issue.
I really like your plan from the technological point of view, but I think that it has some flaws in the sociopolitical department.
Right off the bat, you propose buying a plantation, but those things are pretty expensive. Where will you get the money ?
The core of your plan is to develop, and maintain a monopoly on, technological superiority: in agriculture, construction, and warfare. Unfortunately, your technological advances must be incremental, by necessity—you can’t go from zero to digital computers, nor are you trying to do so. But this means that your technologies will be comprehensible to a well-educated Roman. This practically ensures that your competitive advantage will be stolen by your rivals very quickly. You avoid gunpowder for this very reason, but is it really that much harder to steal pulleys ?
You attempt to get around this with your death-watch guards, but who death-watches the death-watchers ? If I told one of your guards, “nine out of ten gods agree, you should allow me to sneak in one of my smiths to talk to one of your smiths, and BTW here’s a purse containing MXXIV gold pieces with your name on it”, what motivates the guard to refuse ? And what about all of your agricultural innovations—will you watch every peasant ?
In addition, your timetable is too aggressive. You’re proposing to move from horse-plows to powered flight in less than five years. But building an ultralight aircraft, or a fuel refinery, or even a Conastoga wagon, is a lot harder in reality than it looks on paper. Mere abstract knowledge is not enough; you also need raw resources, experience, and training. Merely training your smiths (who, according to the scenario’s setup, lack your intelligence as well as your education) might take a couple years in and of itself.
I believe you also underestimate the social inertia involved. We have trouble with “skepticism, falsificationism, logic, mathematics” and birth control even today; what makes you think that you’ll be any more successful in these endeavours in the pre-Enlightenment Rome ? That “I am the chosen of Vulcan” gambit can only get you so far, and might in fact backfire, because priests tend to take exception to their power structures being disrupted.
We were granted “enough money to live as a patrician for a year”. I made an assumption about what that meant, since in those days all wealth beyond jewelry was in the form of real property (land) anyhow. Agriculturally Spain was traditionally relatively crappy. Land would be cheap and plentiful because it wouldn’t be seen as a viable resource for crop harvesting. (I’d only be able to pull it off because of modern agricultural knowledge.)
Nothing. Well, except that I’d be rotating the guards and so on. Plus; nobody would want what they were selling, at least for the first few years. And by then it really wouldn’t much matter—I’d already have the ramp-up I needed to maintain first-mover advantage. If “the secret” got out… they’d get girardoni air rifles. I would then simply move on to bootstrapping again w/ explosive weapons and revise the tactical rulebook on the generals of the day all over again.
It takes, remember, FAR longer to retrain already-trained soldiers to use new tactics, and they tend to be socially conservative about even wanting to do so. Two total revolutions of military tactics in a ten year window? It would take an genius just to stay competent. (And such rare individuals are very susceptible to assassination. A problem I would also face.)
Individually I fully-well expect a number of the techs to be stolen relatively early on. I’m alright with that, actually. A first-mover advantage traditionally lasts about five years. That’s also one additional reason why I’d chosen a “backwater” or “rural” area to bootstrap in: there will be far fewer ‘educated’ men to deal with, and I will be able to ramp up—initially—in relative isolation. So while I’m bootstrapping up; they must A) discover my bootstrapping, B) uncover the methods used, C) adopt them for themselves. Each of these individually takes time.
Horse collars, pulleys, and a-frames are all individually relatively low-hanging fruit. The leaf-springs necessary for conastoga wagons are far less so. The technical know-how to construct a working turbine engine to proper tolerances is even moreso.
A few months per project at most. Task specialization would be used. As would cast-forging and other modern industrial techniques. Metal lathes, apprentices, and so on. Figure also that I’d only have to train three or four such people, over the course of a few months (to each specific project) -- and they in turn could also retrain others. Use of casting would also increase their productivity. I wouldn’t need very much.
As to the raw resources; that’s why I focused so much on trade.
I was counting on it being extreme. Otherwise, my technological advantage would be far, FAR harder to maintain. The schools—the part where I mentioned ‘”skepticism, falsificationism, logic, mathematics” and birth control’—are not vital or even very contributive to the plan as described.
Nothing, really. But at least the civilization would have an 1800 year jump-start on making it work out. (Plus, we got many of those ideas from classical—traditional grecoroman—thought anyhow.)
Cults and mystery cults were a dime a dozen in those days. If I didn’t have my own I’d be looked upon strangely, and disadvantaged politically. Also, I wouldn’t be interfering with the power structure of any other religious group, so that’s pretty much a total non-concern.
Wait… where else would they harvest crops, if not on land ? They don’t have hydroponics...
That said, it’s entirely possible that I overestimated the value of land as compared to a patrician’s salary, so you could have a point.
That’s just a recipe for more leaks, IMO.
I think your timetable is at odds with your secrecy requirements. If you truly became wildly successful in just a few short years, as is your plan, then everyone would want what you have. Sure, many people would look for the secret magical golden apple that you stole from the Titans or something, but a few smarter ones would come after your peasants, artisans, middle-managers, household slaves, and anyone else who could have knowledge about your operation.
Again, this strategy is at odds with your aggressive goals. Sure, you’ll see a lot less industrial espionage, but you’ll also have a much smaller pool of skilled, mentally flexible artisans to draw upon. Speaking of which:
This claim sounds extraordinary to me. It has been my personal experience (which, admittedly, is entirely anecdotal) that, in the modern world, training a fresh computer science graduate to become moderately productive on a real software project takes about a month; I recall reading somewhere that one to three months is the common figure. And that’s just a CS graduate being trained to do what he studied for ! You are proposing to introduce entirely new concepts during the same period of time, in order to build complex (and expensive) physical objects, not software constructs. I think you’ll need more time.
Fair enough.
You would be, at the end of your five-year-plan. It’s one thing to say, “I’m the chosen of Vulcan because I saw an eagle flying upside down once”. Everyone says stuff like that. It’s a wholly different thing to say, “I’m the chosen of Vulcan because he gave me all this divine hypertech, and look, it’s fwackooming your magistrate as we speak”. Priests of all kinds—including those of Vulcan—would take you seriously then, and I’m not sure if you want that.
… perhaps I did not write sufficiently clearly. The land quality of the area is such that most who lived there would only be able to live subsistence-style lives. This is one reason why the land was a traditional recruiting grounds for the armies; enlisting was basically the only way to drag yourself out of poverty.
What can they leak? They’re guards, not technicians. It’s not like even if I had technical schematics that stealing them would do any good: they didn’t HAVE technical schematics in those days. They’d have to not merely steal said schematics (which I wouldn’t even create in the first place) -- they would have to also take someone who was trained in how to read them. You and I both know that it’s possible to fabricate a CPU using photolithography on silicon wafers. Who can you sell the knowledge of this possibility to? What would they be able to achieve with it? Does knowing about photolithography enable you to read—let alone DRAW—an x86 chip core? I’m sorry, but I don’t find your opinion worth even considering any further on this point. If you can’t tell the difference between the kind of knowledge that comprises technical competence and the kind of knowledge that comprises awareness of technical competence—I’m not sure why your opinion matters here.
See the above. You’re confusing awareness of new technologies with the ability to create them. These are not even remotely similar. I have already stated—repeatedly, I believe? -- that I just don’t care who knows about what I can do. I’m only preserving the secrets of how to actually do it.
Déformation professionnelle. I do not require the technicians producing the goods to understand what they are doing. I need only for them to understand their one single piece of the process.
Furthermore, unlike software development, mechanical products are VERY susceptible to industrial line-assembly techniques. I would have ten or fifteen people—a main blacksmith and his journeymen and his apprentices—to work with for each given product. They would in turn become miniature factories to crank out their chosen products, and would be able to upskill/train others by including them in the line. This reduces vastly the technical complexity of any given ‘piece of the pie’.
Further still; software engineering requires a whole swath of cognitive skills—logical analysis, creative design, high working memory for retention of relevant details, etc., etc., that the rote assembly of parts simply does not require. I would be the one providing the designs for all of this equipment. The technicians and blacksmiths would simply be crafting the same design over and over again.
Think of it like coding the same quicksort algorithm over and over again, after being literally walked through it the first time keystroke by keystroke. Even a monkey could be so trained to code in relatively short orter. In the software world, this would be a useless thing to be doing. Not so for the manufacture of material goods.
Honestly, no—I really wouldn’t be. The technical wherewithal of the mystery cults was significantly greater than the local populations possessed as it was. The aeolipile, for example, was used by mystery cults to automatically open and close doors. The first coin-operated machine was a holy-water dispensor -- (created by the same guy who made the aeolipile—the steam engine—famous; Hero[t]).
Everyone of any wealth either had a mystery cult of their own, or else belonged to a mystery cult of their own. And their membership was not mutually exclusive. The power structure of the polytheistic organizations of the day was absolutely and utterly alien to the priesthood of the monotheistic churches we know today.
That makes more sense, yeah.
You are compartmentalizing the facts too much, and missing the bigger picture. Put yourself into the shoes of your ambitious, greedy and moderately smart neighbour—let’s call him Avaritus. He knows that you have begun extracting wealth from what was formerly known as a financial Tartarus of a plantation. He knows that your peasants and smiths are now equipped with various hitherto unknown devices. He has no idea how these things work, only that they do. He knows that your guards can be bought (or otherwise influenced). He doesn’t know what “technical schematics” are, but he does know what “trained personnel” are. If you were Avaritus, what would you do at this point ?
Are you building everything yourself, personally, or are you training people to do it for you ? If it’s the latter, then your secret knowledge isn’t hidden, it’s just scattered. If your employees are capable of any form of communication, then the knowledge can be reconstructed. More on this below:
That’s true. But those techniques, in turn, are dependent on being able to crank out identical items to very high degrees of tolerance. Thus, at the very minimum, all of your smiths (and I doubt that your plantation would initially have more than a couple of smiths living there) will have to be trained to manufacture items to an absurd (to them) degree of tolerance, as well as in assembly-line techniques. This will take time—more time than you seem to think—and, in and of itself, constitutes a piece of secret knowledge that’s almost trivially easy to steal.
It does, if you want your pistons to actually fit inside your cylinders once the smiths make each part separately..
Did their mystery cults paint big targets on themselves, by proclaiming, “look, I’ve got a flying machine” ?
Here the region I’d be moving into would play some effect. The plantations that did exist in the plains of Spain were geographically isolated from one another. Most of the people in the area would’ve been hardscrobble farmers barely living at-or-above subsistence. And them I’d be actually helping out by-and-large (by way of expanding my economic empire.)
Many of the simpler techniques I’d want to get spreading out; it would make it easier for me to expand my influence. I’d be able to offer trade/transport of goods and the services related; I’d be able to capitalize fractional-reserve-banking to help bootstrap up my neighbors—just not as far as me—and so on. I would only for the first year or two rely upon direct production of goods, as opposed to becoming the financier to the production and transport of said goods. That’s what step 4 was all about.
I would also, however, have to hide the efficacy and usefulness of my weaponry. I suppose I could sell leafspring crossbows to the guardsmen for other local plantation owners. The technical expertise needed to reproduce them would still be fairly high, and their rate of fire would be atrociously low (Even an expert crossbowman would take upwards of fifteen seconds to recock the bow.)
I’d have to recruit smiths from other geographic areas. Not very difficult. I could also have journeymen upskilled somewhat more quickly, given the use of machine tooling and metalcasting. (Push comes to shove there’s also tDCS to increase learning rates.)
You keep insisting on this. I see absolutely no reason to take your insistence seriously. One or two weeks at most would be sufficient for them to “get the idea” of line assembly. It’s a very simple concept. And I also don’t really care if it gets out. Let it. The primary thing that I need to maintain technological secrecy on is the actual assembly of the air rifles. Everything else is an ‘expendable’ secret. Even that is too. And even then; that’s why I’m keeping the guards present with orders to kill defectors or apparent defectors amongst the technicians. And said technicians won’t have any real way of leaving the plantations—so people would have to come to them. The guards would be kept under rotation to ensure bribery is less effective, and I could also implement other forms of information security (listening devices of various technical levels—radio transmitters or secret listening tubes—and other forms of spying. Honeypot traps to test the loyalty of both guards and technicians by giving fake opportunities to defect, etc., etc..) And lastly—again, I think you’re strongly overestimating the amount of time it would take to first notice the manufacture, second plan to adopt them, third achieve the stealing of the tech, and fourth manage to do so at any scale at all. Especially since unlike anyone stealing these techs, I would know what to look for and their value. Which means I could engage in secret sabotage and assassination to eliminate/foil early imitators.
Technological advantage isn’t about secrecy. It can’t be about secrecy. What it is about is the rapid leverage of gaps in technical competence. All of my efforts above aren’t meant to stop the spread of the new techniques—that’s literally impossible. Instead, they are meant to impede their spread outside of my controlled areas of influence.
If I wanted to be especially absurd I could also use things like aerosolized oxytocin to artificially increase the loyalty of my guards and technicians to me personally. Plus, I could select guards whose children I’d saved the lives of. (Remember; I’m planning to use medicine to increase devotion/personal loyalty amongst the peasantry.) And so on.
There would not be any pistons. Are you simply not familiar with aeolipiles or other forms of turbine engines?
I find this inscrutable. What’s your point? What are you driving at? Why is this a relevant thing to be saying/asking?
Fair enough, but this doesn’t eliminate the problem of Avaritus, it just pushes it toward a later stage, and makes him a bigger player (since, by the time you encounter him, you will be a bigger player).
You seem to be assuming, throughout this thread, that your knowledge is unique, and so are your plans. Other people might be able to steal it, or learn it from you, but they wouldn’t be able to figure it out for themselves. In some cases, this is an entirely warranted assumption—no one in Ancient Rome could even conceive of a vacuum tube—but in other cases, the inferential distance is much shorter. Things like pulleys and fractional reserve banking are self-evident once they are deployed; they’re kind of like HTML and “view source” that way. Transparency is inherent in the functionality.
And as for your long-term strategic plans… well, if you were Avaritus, and you learned of a freshly-minted Patrician who is generating massive wealth, hiring up a bunch of smiths, buying metal in bulk, and is engaged in secret military maneuvers—what conclusion would you make from this ?
Remember that, while these Romans are (as specified in the scenario setup) dumber than you, they’re not total idiots.
How will you accomplish this ? After all, you’ll need to train your soldiers in the use of your weaponry. Wouldn’t they all have to be in on the secret ? How many soldiers are you planning on training ? How will you guarantee their unshakeable loyalty and discretion ?
There are modern classes you can take on assembly line training. They take longer than two weeks, and they assume that the audience can read, write, and add, at the very least, which is more than I can say for your backwater Roman peasants. At this point, I’d like to see you produce some evidence that your two-week training period would be sufficient.
In addition, have you personally ever tried to construct something relatively simple, like the Giordani air rifle, in your garage in the modern world, using modern tools (other than, possibly, CNC) ? How long did it take you ?
Who death-watches the death-watchers ? In the rest of the paragraph, you discuss various methods for turning your plantation into a police state, but that type of thing makes your men even less loyal than they’d normally be, and becomes a full-time 24⁄7 endeavour after a while.
If I were Avaritus, I’d focus on stealing one of your assembled prototypes (remember, I know that you have them, I just don’t know what they are). It would be easier than stealing your actual smiths, though that’s an option, too.
At last we can agree on something; but then, why are you so focused on all the rotating death-watch guards ? Why bother keeping anything a secret at all ?
I used pistons and cylinders as a convenient example tolerances that matter. High-pressure valves in your pneumatics would be another example; even the feeding mechanism for your rifles would need to be fairly precise, in order to avoid jamming. But I do confess that I have trouble seeing how you’d use actual aeolipiles for industrial-grade applications; I was assuming that you were using the word to refer to the general class of heat engines, but maybe I was wrong.
Your financial, political, and military success is directly proportional to the number of enemies you end up making. As you build your empire, making the right kinds of enemies (weak, easily crushable ones) will become increasingly important. Priests are the wrong kinds of enemies.
Good. That means a stronger economy for me to work with. Especially since, if he were really my neighbor, I would very likely have a strong business relationship with him by then, providing fertilizer, transportation, and banking services for him. If he manages to steal a few of my technologies… GOOD. That makes him my ally. In all likelihood I would probably be setting up client sub-patricians as a surrounding buffer to myself anyhow, and feeding them inferior versions of my technologies for them to work with.
They’re also producing vastly more complicated products. And are training general assembly workers—workers who can move freely from line-position to line-position. Using a vast array of modern tools in dynamic situations. Exactly the opposite of what I’d be doing. Your objection just doesn’t hold water. You’re making assumptions about what I’d be doing that directly contradict what I have explained I’d be doing.
It’s making any hope of this dialogue go anywhere quite vanishingly small. What part of: “I would train individual workers in individual rote tasks and ONLY those tasks” is such a difficult concept for you to grasp? Why is this such a cognitive stumbling block for you? You keep doing everything in your power to misunderstand me on this point.
Why?
The Giardoni air rifle is not “simple” to make by hand. While the metalsmiths of Rome frequently had the skillset necessary to achieve it, I myself do not. It also required a number of small-ish parts that would not be obvious as to their function in a damaged state. It could be reverse-engineered, certainly, but without an understanding of the mechanical principles involved the mere process of reverse-engineering it and constructing a successful prototype would take as long as a year even for a skilled metalsmith. If we presume merely a three month window for that, it would STILL take at least that long for that metalsmith to train others in its making, and without line-assembly to assist him in so crafting the numbers they could turn out would be far, far smaller. And the rate of fire available to others given the lack of motorized pumps would be far smaller than it would be for my troops. Which is part of the point: all of the technologies selected contribute to one another in non-trivial ways. Extracting the secrets of one or two of the above would result in a bootstrapping period of their own that would also be significantly inferior to my own.
This wouldn’t become an issue until at earliest the third year. And even then the process of reverse engineering without foreknowledge of the actual function of all given parts is less than spectacularly useful.
Also—without a ready fuel supply both the engines and the guns (which are being recharged via motorized pumps, remember) -- would be at best far less effective for any outside agent. And the methylation process itself (along with distillation) would also be subjecct to deathwatch scrutiny, so as to suppress their adoption time by outside actors.
What exactly is it about the concept of “trade secrets” that you are having such a difficult time grasping? Why is it that you can’t figure out—despite my repeatedly explaining this to you—that there is a HUGE difference between “knowing about” a thing and “mastering” a thing?? What exactly is it about the concept of “maintaining technological advantage” that you don’t get? I don’t care if the secrets get out the slow way. That’s fine. But I can certainly work to maintain my technological advantage for a longer window. And the best way to do that is to suppress the direct transmission of technical competence away from those areas under my control.
By making it harder to bribe or kidnap or cause the defection/capture of my technicians I reduce the flow of information outwards. Seriously—why is this a difficult concept for you?
Again: I’m not depending on a total suppression of knowledge. That would be pointless and idiotic. Instead I am working with the first mover advantage. I liinked you to the Wikipedia article on First Mover Advantages already. Please actually read that link, and stop bringing this topic up.
This is not a legitimate objection on your part. Please stop bringing it up.
Financial, political, and military success each create more allies and friends than they do enemies. Especially if you are gracious to your enemies.
You don’t understand religion in Rome, then. Priests were essentially irrelevant. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. There was no such thing as a centralized, powerful religious body in Rome. It didn’t exist. “Priests” did not have political power in the Roman era. That’s just not how the structure of the day worked. Mystery cults were numerous and plentiful—and small. What individuals within a given cult that did have power had said power not because of their religious affiliations but in spite of it.
This, too, is an entirely spurious concern on your part. Please stop raising it.
Because I wouldn’t use them in industrial-grade applications. I would use simple, low-efficiency turbines. And I wouldn’t use them in “industrial applications”. I would use them as power trains for wagons and to power ultralights. Also, you’re strongly underestimating the technical competence of roman metallurgists of the era. Especially after having introduced metal-casting (or sintering) to the era. Cock valves, for example, were in widespread use—and in massive dimensions—at the time, as well as hand-carried water-pumps.
So again, no single item I’d be introducing would—in and of itself—be far outside of the scope of the competencies of the Roman era. But to adopt all of them? Even by reverse-engineering after being exposed to the existence of the concept, adopting more than a handful here-and-there would require several years.
And by then I’d already be in possession of vast sums of money and materials, at which point having trade partners I could use to accelerate my acquisition of the needed materials, parts, and equipment to achieve my ends would only be beneficial to me.
Remember, also, that I’d have a buffer zone of several hundred miles between myself and the nearest actual city, and would otherwise be surrounded almost exclusively by the kinds of people the word “pagani” originally referred to: rednecks. This was not an accident. The geographical placement in mind was also designed to help suppress the dissemination of my technologies outside of my scope of influence.
To summarize my objections to your plan:
Your goals of secrecy and widespread economic development are in direct conflict.
You underestimate the time it would take to execute your plans.
You underestimate the social opposition to your plans which would develop once you began making progress.
With this in mind:
Great, but then, why do you need all the death-watching rotating uber-guards ? Why not just make your technologies available at a reasonable cost ? You’re going to be one step ahead of the competition no matter what, so what do you have to gain by keeping secrets ? Do these gains outstrip the productivity losses and potential PR disasters ?
I was under the impression that what you’d be doing is, training your smiths to crank out plow/rifle/air pump/aircraft parts to precise tolerances. This process would start by explaining to them the concept of “tolerances”. This can be done, and it can be done relatively quickly, but not as quickly as you claim—especially since, as you say, “there is a HUGE difference between “knowing about” a thing and “mastering” a thing”. Every time I bring up the potential difficulties involved, you just assert your position more boldly. At this point, I need to see some evidence. This is why I asked you whether you personally ever tried to construct an air rifle, to which you replied:
Your character in this game we’re playing would have the detailed schematics for the Giardoni air rifle memorized. Do you believe that, therefore, he would have not only the “skillset necessary to achieve it”, but also the ability to teach it to average provincial smiths in Ancient Rome ? Or look at it in this way: you are not your character, but you have access to the Internet, so you don’t need to memorize stuff. How long would it take you, today, using modern hand-operated tools, to manufacture a working Giardoni air rifle ?
No, they did not, but they had the power to excite a population, just like they do in any other era.
Ok, so I guess I don’t understand what you mean by “aeolipiles”. Can you explain what an aeolipile drive for an ultralight, yet heavier-than-air craft would look like (or, preferably, link me to the relevant Wikipedia article) ? Or possibly I misunderstood what you meant by “ultralights”; perhaps you actually meant “lighter than air” ?
In this case, where will you procure your raw materials, and what will you trade for them ? You can have isolation, or you can’t have trade, but, historically, it has proven impossible to have both.
I have downvoted your comment. I have done so because you continue to raise spurious objections to positions I do not hold and insist that I address them.
This is contradictory of rational discourse and as such should be discouraged on LessWrong.
FWIW, I downvoted your comment for exactly the same reason.
No, you downvoted me in retaliation. Your arguments are spurious and I have repeatedly identified them as this. I have repeatedly rejected your insistence that I’m “depending on secrecy”. I have repeatedly attempted to explain to you the difference between ‘secrecy’ and conservation of technical competence. I have repeatedly explained how I would be able to both engage in trade/commerce and maintain relative geographic isolation relative to all other actors of the era. Case in point: your most recent reiterated objection:
-- This is false. I have explained this to be false. No such concepts would be conveyed. Instead, the line workers would be trained to make parts in an exacting manner and be given tools necessary to that end. Notched gauges for example. No conceptual explanations would be needed—only rote mechanical actions. I stated essentially exactly this, more than once. (Providing such conceptual frameworks rather than rote memorization of tasks would, furthermore, allow for the easier dissemination of technical competence outside of my control. A goal contradictory to my ends.)
Your response was to claim that I reacted by “merely making my claims bolder”. The problem with this, of course, is that your objections were invalid from the outset—they did NOT map to anything I was claiming. Take for further example on this very topic your usage of the general line assemblyman course as a ‘citation’ for your objection.
It was wholly and entirely inappropriate to the task of acting as a valid citation for an objection to what I was claiming for the simple reason that it did not address any claims of mine.
You continue to raise these objections despite their entirely spurious nature, and you continue to demand in this dialogue that I address these objections.
This is, as I said previously, contradictory of rational discourse and as such should be discouraged on LessWrong. I noted this and you in return downvoted me claiming the same of me as I have made clear of your positions.
This, too, is spurious and irrational behavior and as such should bee discouraged on LessWrong.
Usable penicillin is very difficult to acquire. The penicillin mold simply doesn’t produce very much, and the chemical produced is unstable. It took a ten-year project to get a stabilized version that could be injected, and the first penicillin pill wasn’t made until 1952.
Also, windmills and waterwheels already existed. And where are you going to get an insecticide from, anyway?
The technical knowledge of which I would be in possession of. And therefore know how to shortcut to the end product. Three or four rounds of experimental trials, each taking a couple of weeks, followed by intentional use of radical selection pressure to generate a strain that has the desired properties. Given the generational periodicity of 1 week per round, six months at most would be sufficient to produce a working product. (Also; deep tank fermentation was a large part of why pennicillin would be available in bulk to me. A larger problem would be the probenecid production, but that’s a different story.)
Also—the fact that pennicillin wasn’t available in our history until 1952 in pill form wouldn’t be much of an impediment nor even really an interesting question.
Windmills, yes. In the hands of Persians, not in Romans. And they weren’t moving quantities of water—classical mechanics as we know it today was not ‘invented’ until over a thousand years later.
There are many, many plants which produce insecticidal/nematocidal/fungicidal chemicals as a part of their normal lifecycles. Harvesting and processing them for these purposes is not exactly a technically complicated process. It just requires knowledge of them.
Major barrier right at the start: buying a little chunk of land is one thing, but a bunch of the stuff in step 2 will require very large capital outlays by the standards of the time—especially the mill.
There’s a reason automation didn’t catch on before the industrial revolution: capital was scarce and peasants were abundant. It wouldn’t be easy to actually produce crops more cost-effectively than peasant labor, when the peasant labor is absurdly cheap. Things like fertilizer could help, but even that will run into problems—people don’t like poop on their food, and chemical fertilizer/insecticide requires relatively complicated manufacturing facilities.
Forgive my ignorance, but is introducing penicillin such a good idea? It would provide a considerable advantage in the short-term, but once the cat gets out of the bag and the knowledge spreads to the rest of the Empire (I assume it’s not that difficult to manufacture), you’d have antibiotic resistance everywhere, and no international medical community to clamp down on over-prescription.
Additionally, showing off what biodiesel can do might kickstart general fossil fuel extraction before the technology exists to monitor pollution and greenhouse gas levels.
Re: drug resistance—that takes decades to become a problem. By then I’d be soundly in control and could disseminate germ theory freely. I’d need to introduce other antibiotics as well but I’d have the ability to do so easily.
Introduction of biodiesel would bypass the adoption/usage of fossil fuels. Also, the population-at-large would be significantly smaller and would reach postindustrial status at a population far, far smaller than modern population.
These aren’t major problems.
Would disseminating germ theory really help all that much? Rome itself might have been a fairly literate society, but in the time it would take to overcome all the inferential distances in just the educated classes, the drug would have spread like wildfire through the rest of Europe and the Near East by merchants hoping to make a quick sesterce from selling the “miracle cure” to the peasantry.
The Romans already believed something very similar to germ theory: that diseases were caused by an invisible contagion that was passed through contact/exposure to those already infested by it.
Also, I would be the primary distributor and manufacturer of pennicillin; so I could have some control over how it was distributed. Ensuring it got into the hands first of medics trained in my courses—I.e.; people who knew about germ theory—would be trivial.
Plus, I’d have decades to resolve the issue.
Silly Logos01. Do you think you will get any of this done in a Constitutional Republic? In practice the Rome of the first century AD would be more a Republic than what you would need to get this done
If this worked you would de facto be God Emperor of Hispania or the state would be a plutocracy with you as the wealthiest man in the world. Once you die good luck trying to set up a workable republican culture, or people following anything but the forms of your proposed system of government. Social engineering is hard.
But in any case that isn’t the goal here and I wouldn’t be too upset in any case. Long live the Leviathan!
Well, I’d start out as god-emperor and dictator for life, but I’d try to keep myself from having an actual successor… (even if it didn’t really work, just introducing the notion would eventually cause it to stabilize to that effect.)
Indeed. Luckily these folks would not yet have been immunized to Nazi-style propaganda campaigns or other forms of indoctrination. This is one additional reason why I focused on propaganda and publication. I’d expect to face certain failure in achieving the total optimal result, but could at the very least implement a tendency towards these models.
If I treat myself as an aberration to the system, and create a power structure that could survive me—assuming I had a good fifty or so years to institutionalize it in the eyes and ears of mankind, I could spend the last ten or fifteen years gradually introducing the parliamentary rule; handing over more and more political power to the Senate in a graceful manner, until I’m seen as more of an advisory role than an actual power figure. That would be an end-state goal, though.
I’m having a hard time thinking of any population that is. I mean sure we won’t see a rise in Nazism in our life times but that’s because the Nazi’s lost the war, not because people became immune to their propaganda techniques. If anything modern propaganda techniques are much better and we are even more helpless against them.
Immunized != Immune.
It’s an arms-race. Nazi-style propagandizing included use of radio and television, and control over print media, as well as sponsored postings of visual posters and the like in public spaces. These things are what I was referring to; and people today are relatively immune to such “crass” techniques, which is why modern propaganda techniques are so much more sophisticated: the “old” ones stopped being sufficiently effective.
If we consider propaganda a form of virulent memeplex, then the immunological model describes quite well the history of and reactions to various forms of propaganda by the common populace over time: first there is exposure to a new “strain”, and then people become resistant to it in a very similar manner to how we become resistant to various viruses.
I wonder if anyone has ever studied Third World propaganda campaigns over time to demonstrate an ‘evolution’ which recapitulates Western evolution in propaganda?
(I mention this because I saw recently the old example of Liberia’s Charles Taylor who was elected when he ‘campaigned on the slogan “He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him.”’. Of course, his landslide was probably due to “the belief that he would resume the war if he lost.” which is why one would want multiple countries. Do they all show this sort of phenomenon where laughably crude propaganda and campaigning works initially and is slowly replaced by subtler psy-ops, or is there no evolution because crude propaganda works best on those of low IQ, say?)
I would imagine that any researcher who confirmed such an effect would refrain from publishing, and instead become the supreme dictator of some third world country.
Dictator? You mean campaign manager.
As GLaDOS points out, nobody’s really immune, as such, but it wasn’t a new tactic. ‘Demagogue’ is a Greek word, and the techniques involved had been known for centuries before 1AD. Take the brothers Grachii as your bar; if you can manipulate public opinion more smoothly than they did, you might have a shot.
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Immunization does not provide perfect immunity. I was referring to the specific techniques and methods used by the Nazis for propagandizing; broadcasts, posters plastered everywhere, and so on, and so on. People today are relatively immunized against blithely trusting the validity of government-sponsored statements. This was not true before that time.
My model of humanity has them cynical enough that they stopped being blithely trusting of the validity of government-sponsored statements about ten minutes after the emergence in prehistory of something which could be loosely described as ‘government’.
The history of the efficacy of the propaganda used by both the “Axis Powers” in WWII and the Allies in WWII would tend to conflict with your model, insofar as I understand both sets of data.
“Rosie the Riveter” was a purely government-sponsored fabrication, and yet women signed up to work in factories by the thousands as a result of said campaign. German introduction of anti-semitism literally introduced the practice in Japan—beforehand the Japanese people had a view of Jews that was quite the opposite (i.e.; that they were a ‘superior people’) … which is why before the German/Japanese alliance got fully implemented, the Japanese had an active recruiting campaign for Jewish persons.
There are a vast swathe of such examples from that era. None of these techniques are effective today. See: “Tobacco is Whack-o”, “This is your brain on drugs”, etc., etc..
Are you sure this is a good idea considering modern Western civilization hasn’t yet demonstrated the survivability of such technology? Let alone an upstart society in underpopulated Roman Spain. In any case the ancients did know means of birth control and it at various points sapped the power of the Roman state.
Silphium was reputed to have birth controlling properties because its seeds were heart-shaped. I was talking about something a little more… reliable… such as, say, Premarin.
As to the survivability of such technology—TFR explosions are a problem. birth control would be introduced to cut down overpopulation resultant from implementing immunological practices (vaccination and antibiotics.) The problems of modern fertility rate have far, far less to do with birth control and far more to do with the economics of raising children in a postindustrial environment. Even then, it turns out that TFR is showing a reversal of the declining trend in the last few years.
Overall I’d say there’s pretty little to worry about. Especially since I’d have a good five decades of longevity to play with; I could pretty reliably introduce computing and electronics within that window, and that would be enough to ensure humanity develop AGI sometime in the next few centuries.
You got it wrong. It is the other way around.